optical information storage discs, commonly referred to as "compact discs" or "CD's", have become a popular medium for storing information. In the music recording industry, for example, digital audio compact discs have rendered conventional phonograph records obsolete, due in part to the inherent capability of compact disc technology to reproduce the information recorded on the compact disc without causing physical degradation or wear to the disc surface. Thus, the music played from a compact disc is always free from the noise and distortion associated with the playing of conventional phonograph records or magnetic tapes having worn recording surfaces. Another advantage of compacts discs are their ability to store large amounts of digitized information in a relatively small amount of space, which makes the discs ideal for multimedia applications in which it is desirable to store large amounts of text, audio and image data together on a single disc. Many reference materials, for example encyclopedias, are now produced in multimedia format on compact discs. The compact discs also offer the ability to quickly and randomly access any portion of stored data, and are therefore extremely useful in archive applications. Systems have recently been introduced, for example, in which photographic images are digitized and archived on compact discs for subsequent retrieval and display.
The popularity of compact discs has led to the need for CD writing units that are capable of quickly producing large numbers of CDs to meet market demands. An example of a CD writing unit is the Kodak PCD Writer 200 marketed by the Eastman Kodak Company of Rochester, N.Y. In operation, a blank CD is manually placed in a drawer mechanism that extends from the CD writing unit. The drawer mechanism is then closed and a write operation is performed. The recorded CD must then be manually retrieved from the drawer mechanism. While it is possible to increase CD recording production by improving the speed at which the CD writing unit operates, the requirement for the manual loading of the CD's into and out of the CD writing unit reduces the efficiency of the operation and adds expense, as an operator must be dedicated to the task of loading and unloading CD's. Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide an apparatus capable of automatically transporting and loading the CD's to and from the write drawer.
In view of the above, it is an object of the invention to provide an automatic disc transport apparatus for reliably and automatically handling the movement and loading of compact discs into and out of a CD writing unit.